i spent a couple of hours yesterday on our back deck wrapped in a blanket with a pot of lapsang souchong tea and books piled high. after not reading anything but smut for a couple of months (seriously. since we got cable i forgot how to read. despicable.) i hit the ground running with danielle laporte’s desire map, anne lamott’s some thoughts on faith and another lil’ gem called if the buddha married.

i read blogs like it’s my job but it has definitely been awhile since i have sat and dug deep into some mind-expanding, life-altering books, and all of these books are most certainly that.

what are you reading these days?

a few of my fave parts so far with more to come:

“the truth is that meaningful change is a process. it can be uncomfortable and is often risky, especially when we’re talking about embracing our imperfections, cultivating authenticity, and looking the world in the eye and saying, ‘i am enough.’

however afraid we are of change, the question that we must ultimately answer is this: what the greater risk? letting go of what people think or letting go of how i feel, what i believe, and who i am?

wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. it’s about cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, i am enough.

it’s going to bed at night thinking, yes, i am perfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that i am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.

it makes sense to me that the gifts of imperfection are courage, compassion, and connection, because when i think back to my life before this work, i remember often feeling fearful, judgmental, and alone – the opposite of these gifts…

choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance…one minute you’ll pray that the transformation stops, and the next minute you’ll pray that it never ends.

you’ll also wonder how you can feel so alive and so afraid at the same time. at least that’s how i feel most of the time…brave, afraid and very, very alive.”

- brene brown 

it’s funny – so many wonderful, amazing, holyshiticannotbelieveit things have happened to me in this past few months, and for some reason, i just don’t feel like myself.

it’s not that i’m not grateful. i cannot imagine anything better for myself, but it’s like my body and mind can’t quite catch up to all of this change and excitement, and i don’t feel very present.

how do you remedy this? or is it about not changing a thing, and just riding this wave til its end? til you feel like you again. i feel like i’ve tried it all – hibernating, a juice cleanse, two quiet sundays in a row.

a reader wrote the other day and said, “how can i always be happy like you are?” i was so alarmed when i read it. i wrote back immediately and explained that i wasn’t always happy, looking at the world through rose-colored lenses, but that i was more likely to write when i did feel like that. life happens – big events, crises, hormones, hangovers. things happen, and you just gotta roll with it.

last night we stopped into our local grocery store to pick up a few things, and even though i was feeling so quiet and withdrawn, we ran into about ten people that we knew. usually that would excite me to no end, but i just don’t feel like that right now. i crave quiet. i wanna run away with my man and our pup to a cabin the woods for a week.

and you know what? sometimes that’s perfectly okay. it’s the ebb and the flow.